Star Wars Comics

My love of comics began at an early age, growing out of the fertile crescent that was the original Star Wars movie trilogy. The first single comic issue I owned was Star Wars Bounty Hunters - Kenix Kil. It featured this crazy rogue Imperial Guard and was basically a revenger type story. It was entirely off the beaten path from the films and had nothing to do with the Skywalker family affair. Here's the cover and a few pages. You can get the full issue digitally at Comixology.com. This issue was published in print by Dark Horse back in October 1999.

Star Wars comics started in 1977, the same year the first movie premiered. Marvel was the original publisher and was so for ten years, producing 107 single issues of Star Wars. From 1991 to 2014 Dark Horse Comics was the home for Star Wars comics and they produced a lot of them, over 100 titles. "Titles" are basically subtitles of Star Wars, for instance Star Wars: Legacy is a title, Star Wars: Empire is another.

Speeding ahead to the present, we now see Star Wars solidly embedded in the Walt Disney Company and therefore the comics are now back at Marvel, which is also owned by Disney. In truth I haven't been following the new Marvel Star Wars that closely. I did love the limited Lando comic as well as some of the Kanaan: The Last Padawan, maybe because those characters are lesser known than Luke, Han, and Leia. I think largely the strength of Star Wars is held in the expanded universe, the comics, books, etc. So when the new comics seem to be circling back to focus on Luke, Han, and Leia I feel in some way that the universe is much smaller than I was led to believe.

I understand that new audiences are just that, new, and so circling back around to the main heroes isn't a bad thing, but I do want to expand that universe a little more. The coolest thing about the era we're living in is that Star Wars is still happening! Comics are still happening! So we have a chance to keep playing in that world, it's not closed off to us who are artists and writers.

Here's where I would love to say that I'm currently working on a Star Wars comic for Marvel, but the answer is unfortunately "no" on that account. BUT if Star Wars taught me anything it was to dream big and work hard. I've got a Boba Fett story kicking around in my head and wanted to make some covers for fun, and yes of course, attention! Please share whatever you see here and if you work at Marvel give me a call someday. But enough about me, lets jump into the project!

Here are three cover designs very loosely based on my story. I start with a pretty simple sketch of the main character Boba Fett. I put those sketches in a comic sized photoshop frame and start playing around with the shadows/light sources, keeping in mind that the highest contrast areas center the viewers eyes. I'm really happy with the first two designs and only moderately with the third, it's a bit goofy, I'll probably change it. When I make three or more of anything I look at them together and think, "what don't I have represented here?" My answer for this is that I don't have a group of people on any of these issues. Boba Fett is the main character of course but Star Wars is a big world, it should be peopled with a multitude of interesting beings. I'll most likely change the third cover from a single enemy to multiples hunter for Fett in the shadows. Stay tuned!